Lacalle: Net-Zero Will Make You Poorer. Negative real wage growth is a consequence of Keynesian policies. By Daniel Lacalle

Net-zero policies embody what Ayn Rand called the left’s anti-industrial revolution. From Daniel Lacalle at dlacalle.com:

If you read the latest OECD publication, “Employment Outlook 2024: The Net Zero Transition and the Labour Market,” you would imagine that the world has not gone through the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in decades.

The results are so poor, they are embarrassing. Furthermore, the report illustrates the impoverishment of citizens and subtly suggests that achieving the net zero goal will present an even greater challenge. Translation: You will be even poorer.

According to the OECD report, 20% of the global workforce is in jobs that will expand due to the net-zero transition. The report basically tells us that the remaining 80% will face significant challenges.

Furthermore, it highlights that “low-income and rural households usually spend more on goods and services with larger carbon footprints, such as energy and food, because they are typically necessary goods.

Therefore, climate-mitigation policies, by increasing the relative price of carbon-intensive goods, will tend to affect these households as consumers disproportionally, with a strong impact on the real value of their income and wages. Recent carbon pricing reforms in many countries have indeed proved regressive. Recycling the revenue from carbon taxes in the form of transfers to households, however, can make this type of reform progressive. Yet targeting these transfers towards household needs is key to cost efficiency. ” Thus, we are doomed. Just look at the disastrous result of the carbon tax in the European Union, what it has done to inflation of non-replaceable goods and services and the widespread increase in discontent among citizens.

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